The present invention relates to a method and system for distributing via a network to a user, so-called digital contents such as music, an electronic game, an application software, and news items. The present invention also relates to a server and a user terminal constituting the content distribution system and to a recording medium for storing thereupon a program to execute distribution of contents.
With a progress and development of communication networks, a service to distribute digital contents including music, electronic game, application software, and news items via networks to users is increasingly put to practical use. Conventional way of acquiring such contents for a user is to go to a record store to purchase a compact disk (CD) containing information related to the music. When the user desires to obtain an electronic game, he or she goes to a specialty store to buy a compact-disk read-only memory (CD-ROM) on which information related to the game is recorded. Recently, it is possible for the user to acquire such items as follows. Distributing company or a provider sends digital data of the requested item, from a provider's server to a user terminal connected via a network, so that the user can use that data and pay for a price of the obtained item in one of convenient ways.
One of the content distribution systems to distribute contents via a network to the user is as follows. User uses as a terminal equipment, a personal computer, a game machine, a television set, a mobile telephone such as a portable personal assistant or the like owned at home, and issues an order request from that terminal to the provider. Upon reception of the order request, the provider transmits to the user terminal digital data related to the request of the user.
If a user does not have such a terminal, he or she issues an order from a terminal for common use installed, for example, in a convenience store. The provider sends, upon reception of the order, pertinent digital data to the shared terminal. This is another type of a content distribution system. In this situation, if the news items have been ordered, the user reads these news items displayed on the shared terminal. In a case where music or an electronic game has been ordered, the user connects his or her own portable terminal or a recording medium to the shared terminal to transfer digital data distributed from the provider to the shared terminal.
In a content distribution via a network, particularly, in a content distribution via a terminal such as a user terminal which cannot handle money, some kind of means is required for the user to pay for the obtained item. According to a prior art technique, a user inputs information such as a number of his or her credit card, that is necessary for the payment. The order reception side confirms if the user is solvent or not, according to the input information and thereafter distributes contents of the ordered item to the user. This procedure has the possibility that a third person sneaks a look at a number of the credit card. If this happens, there is the possibility that the third person passes himself off as a card holder and fraudulently receives the distributed service using a number of the credit card.
There is another way of distributing a content. That is, the orderer (a user side) and those who receives the order agree on a payment procedure in advance so that information necessary for the payment such as a password, a pin number, a credit card number, a bank account number, and the like are previously registered. When a user issues an order, he or she inputs such confidential information as the registered pin number and the password for identification of the user. If it is confirmed, the order receiving side distributes a content related to the ordered item. However, this method has a disadvantage that a third person obtains confidential information by stealing a glance at the information or having a guess at it, thus passing himself off as said person without difficulty.
In the prior art method, because of insufficient identification of the user, it is difficult to prevent a fraudulent reception of distribution by a third person with evil intent.
Apart from the illegal reception of a distributed content, the content distribution side desires to restrict utilization of distributed contents. For example, it is necessary to protect intellectual property rights concerning music software products, software game products, and an application software. For this purpose, it is desired to place a limit on utilization of distributed contents. The content distributing side therefore allows only a user who has paid for a price to use the distributed item, thus preventing illegal copy of the products. However, since the prior art method has insufficient user identification, this kind of restriction cannot be absolutely accomplished. Therefore, proposition to accomplish such restriction has been desired.
Prior art technique has another problem that, when a shared terminal installed in a store or the like is used as a user terminal to receive a distributed content, a processing required for issuing an order becomes complicated. This is because such shared terminal installed in a store has functions to deal with a wide variety of contents. When a user uses the terminal, the user is required to specify individual content by selecting it from among many items. For example, the user should specify his or her desired artist and the name of music for a music item, the kind of game for a game item, and for news items, a category and the date and time of news should be specified. Operations required are therefore considerably complicated.
To gain access to the news using the shared terminal, a user reads in some cases a financial column first, then a sports column, and finally a column of show business, and the like. In this case, the user is required to repeatedly conduct the same operation for each category. This is quite troublesome for the user. For inputting such items, operations are carried out through the use of a key board and selection buttons combined, a touch panel, and the like. This is quite difficult for the user to operate.
An electronic mail from person to person and an electronic magazine from a person to many registered subscribers to the magazine can also be regarded as a kind of contents. It can be considered that a user operates an information terminal at a place where he or she is staying, for example in a store, to read confidential information such as a mail or a mail magazine destined for the user or to download the information into his or her own device. This situation also arises a problem of complexity associated with confirmation of a user identification and specification of the objective information.
One of the known methods to identify a user with high accuracy is based on biological features called biometrics. This method uses features obtained by measuring biometrics of a person, for example, a fingerprint, for personal identification. Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 11-96363 describes a settlement method using a fingerprint for authentication. In this settlement method, a user's fingerprint read by a fingerprint reader at the time of the settlement is compared or verified with fingerprint data previously registered so as to identify the user.
However, there has been no content distribution via a network, to which the personal identification using a fingerprint is applied. Moreover, by simply applying such identification to the content distribution, it is not possible to solve the problem associated with complexity of processing and the problem related to restriction of utilization of distributed contents.